<p>DS has the chance to take a SAT prep for elective. Has anyone done this? How is it viewed by adcoms?</p>
<p>Before you sell their souls to some ******* teacher, have them take a practice test from the blue CollegeBoard book. If they score 650+ in each section, don’t have them bother with the course.</p>
<p>Have them read good, vocabulary building novels like Shelley’s Frankenstein. You know the deal. Pick a book—if they groan, it means you’ve got a winner. Have them define the words they don’t know and review them once in a while. Alternatively, you could have them use flashcards.</p>
<p>The writing and math are sheer preparation. Have them read through a Princeton Review, Kaplan, or Sparknotes book for the hardcore strategies. They’re all the same, and they’re all good. Keep in mind that the only tests they should take are out of the CollegeBoard book, as, in my near-expert experience, anything else is an inaccurate indication of your actual performance on the test.</p>
<p>If they keep to a solid schedule, take all eight practice tests out of the blue CollegeBoard book, and read like they’ve never read before, they’ll only take the test once. That 2400 is durn pretty…</p>
<p>Nearly all HS SAT prep courses are notoriously bad. High school teachers, while they might be very good at teaching their respective subjects, simply cannot teach the SAT very well (one factor being that they did not themselves score very high on the exam). I was asked by a local private school to run an SAT course for them for the March SAT. Our students improved by an average of 220 points on the diagnostics. But you will be hard-pressed to find that from any other school course.</p>
<p>heck no. 
The only thing useful about the SAT prep tests are the actual 5 tests. 
Don’t worry. I took it 3 times and did about 120 points better each time on each section. U don’t need to study for it; You just get smarter as the semesters pass. Trust me. I did NO prep (basically) and ended up with a 1600. This of course is back when the 1600 was the highest score u could get</p>
<p>yuk, HS SAT prep,please don’t let her. it was a waste of time and a waste of money(if you pay). Just really stupid, you don’t learn anything either.</p>
<p>I took the SAT prep class in my school just because I felt like seeing how good/bad the teachers were. </p>
<p>The books we use are terrible. The teachers don’t know what they’re doing. Some of us have to always correct teachers when they give us wrong answers, because they insist that what the answer key gives them is correct. </p>
<p>It really isn’t worth any money, and I regret having paid anything for that. We have a french teacher teaching the math section, a history teacher teaching Critical Reading, and an English teacher (who has trouble knowing the difference between who and whom) teaching the writing section. The only good thing about the course is that we get Kaplan verbal workbooks (outdated though) that are very, very good. The Kaplan Critical Reading '04 and verbal '99 workbooks contain the same passages, vocabulary, and roots anyway. </p>
<p>I would not recommend the course. Some of the students who take those courses in my school and actually use the techniques taught by the courses, claim to do worse after they take the course.</p>
<p>My answer is absolutely no.</p>
<p>You do not need to spend that money on private tutoring.</p>
<p>I say buy the official book from the Collegeboard. Devote yourself and rock.</p>
<p>You’ll learn how to study for standardized tests and you’ll save a lot of money.</p>
<p>Just to put out a slightly different light. Most of these students are super students who score at the very top of the SAT spectrum. SAT classes are great for students that don’t score high w/o prep and not so good the higher your scores are.</p>
<p>In my experience, I did receive some benefit from the PR course i took but most of my improvement came from taking the 8 college board test. some of the stuff does work…dont know if its worth X amount of dollars though.</p>
<p>good luck!</p>
<p>I took a SAT prep class over the summer, not with a school. It ran monday through friday for about a month, I believe. What was it? Two teachers (one english, one math) teaching the Barron’s text book. Seniors to be and those in the class of 06 and beyond were lumped together. They knew less than I did about the new SAT. </p>
<p>Really, if your d/s have any diligence or initiative, learning on your own is the better option. Get the $20 book (or two, or three books) instead of either blowing money on a course or spending a semester in HS when he/she could be taking other courses.</p>
<p>only way you can “improve” is by continuing school (take this at the end of your junior year) or by doing as MANY SAT tests as you can.</p>
<p>I personally took over 40.</p>
<p>I also agree: your child shouldn’t. Teachers are horrible. No.</p>
<p>Does TestMasters give diagnostics out of the Official SAT Study Guide, or are these their own exams (such as what Kaplan and PR do)? How many classes (and how many hours each) is a full new SAT course?</p>